Your Story is Your Superpower: Interview with Ron Mita
Listen to full episode :
In this episode, Heather and Jess welcome Ron Mita, who discusses the evolution of storytelling, the changing landscape of film production, and the impact of globalization on narratives. He shares insights on navigating the industry as a screenwriter, the importance of networking, and the challenges faced by writers today. Mita emphasizes the need for aspiring writers to have a story to tell and to communicate their goals within the industry. He also reflects on the state of the industry, including the effects of streaming and the writer's strike, while offering valuable advice for those looking to break into the field.
About Ron Mita
Despite a lifelong love of movies and a strong desire to become a filmmaker, Ron Mita
began his professional career as a graphic artist. He quickly realized his true passion was storytelling and shifted his path to pursue a graduate degree in screenwriting at Loyola Marymount University.
While attending school and working various jobs in the film and television industry, Ron sold his first screenplay to Columbia Pictures—all before graduating in 1993.
Since then, Ron has built a successful career as a professional screenwriter, working on projects for Universal Pictures, Sony Pictures, Columbia Pictures, Tri-Star Pictures, HBO, TNT, Warner Bros., Screen Gems, DreamWorks, and CBS.
He has four produced films to his credit: the animated feature Robots for 20th Century Fox; S.W.A.T. starring Samuel L. Jackson and Colin Farrell for Columbia Pictures; Sniper II starring Tom Berenger for Tri-Star Pictures; and, most recently 24 Hours to Live starring Ethan Hawke.
Currently, Ron is developing an animated adaptation of The Wizard of Oz with Studio Action Synthese in France.
In 2002, Ron joined the faculty at College of the Canyons in Santa Clarita, California, where he teaches screenwriting and film production. Today, he continues to divide his time between writing professionally and mentoring the next generation of filmmakers.
Takeaways
Storytelling has evolved globally, with similar themes across cultures.
Hollywood seeks films with contained budgets and global appeal.
Globalization affects the portrayal of antagonists in films.
Writers often have to accept changes made to their scripts by studios.
Networking is crucial for breaking into the film industry.
Internships provide valuable connections and opportunities.
Collaboration with writing partners can enhance creativity but requires compromise.
Building a personal brand is essential for success in Hollywood.
The film industry is more competitive than ever due to globalization.
Aspiring writers should always have a story ready to pitch.
Ron’s Links
College of the Canyons — 100% Online - Scriptwriting Fundamentals
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Heather (00:01)
Heather for Jess. Can you switch to two?
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Go for Jess.
Switching.
Heather (00:07)
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Jess (00:08)
and I'm Jess.
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Jess (00:24)
Tune in for fresh tea, hot takes, industry guests, and the occasional chaos.
Heather (00:29)
This is Switching Two, the side channel for creative conversations.
Jess (00:33)
We're glad you're here.
Heather (00:36)
All right, we're on two
well, we are, we're here. Happy episode. I'm so excited because we have Ron Mita on the podcast. Ron is a screenwriter. He is a professor of film. He's been working in this industry for decades and he has so much great content to bring to the table. We will chat about that, but first I just want to intro him a little bit. So.
Jess (00:42)
We're here. Happy episode.
Heather (01:07)
Ron is a screenwriter. He went to Loyola Marymount University. He got his master's in screenwriting there. And then shortly after, he sold his first screenplay to Columbia Pictures, all before graduating in 1993. And then since then, he's built such a successful career as a professional screenwriter, working on projects for all the major
He has experience with both animated and live action films and he has just a wealth of knowledge about screenwriting, working as a professional in this industry, and also he's a professor. So he's very well versed in, you know, the educational side. We talk about film school versus no film school, all that good stuff.
Jess (01:52)
Yeah, he gives us lot of information about, you know, tools and skills that are useful in this industry and a lot of tips that he gives his students. So you get kind of like a free education in this episode.
Heather (02:05)
Yes, Ron comes at things very much with a business mindset. I mean, he's a creative, for sure, but he's always got this business angle to it. And because he wants to see, you know, ultimately, like his students be successful. I consider Ron one of my mentors and he's just provided so much information and support to me over the years. But it's really ultimately he wants to see people succeed. And so he's always giving you that.
information having been in this business and been successful himself, how to position yourself and work your way through this path with a business, business mind so that you can, make a career for yourself.
Jess (02:46)
Well, we're really excited to have him on the pod today. think he's again, he gives so much information and lessons that he's learned over the years and how he would apply it today. You know, even though things have maybe changed a little bit, but he still, he gave some fantastic examples of networking and the things that you need to do to be able to be successful in this industry.
Heather (03:08)
Yeah, Ron knows what's going on. So without further let's get into it.
Jess (03:10)
Yeah, he
Heather (03:14)
hello hi Ron welcome thanks for being on the pod today can you start by enjoying yourself to everyone
Jess (03:15)
Welcome!
Ron Mita (03:17)
Hello?
Sure, hi, my name's Ron Mita. I am a screenwriter. I've had several produced credits. I've been writing since 1993, but I'm also a professor at the College of the Canons where I teach screenwriting of all things.
Heather (03:34)
Very cool. Well, welcome, Ron. We're so happy to have you on the pod. ⁓ I'm really excited to just dive in to today because we have so many good things to chat about. I want to hear from you about growing up and going into filmmaking or, you know, being a screenwriter as a career.
Jess (03:37)
Welcome!
Ron Mita (03:40)
Glad to be here.
Heather (03:58)
What was your childhood like? Was there any one thing that kind of was the moment for you that said, okay, I want to do this thing right here.
Ron Mita (04:07)
Yeah, actually, I think there really was. so I grew up loving movies. I grew up in the 70s. So, you know, going to movies was a different experience. Well, there was two experiences. you ⁓ the movies came back, you know, if you if you saw Star Wars, it would come back again in a few months and then a year later. So you actually got to anticipate the return of movies. Disney all as a kid growing up, all Disney movies came back every year because again, it was hard to find them on TV. You could.
And then the other thing I would do is every Sunday you'd get the the week's worth of what was gonna be on TV and I'd go through and highlight all the movies I wanted to see you know and if I was lucky it was gonna be one of those ones that I absolutely loved. So I grew up loving movies absolutely passionate about movies couldn't wait to see what was gonna be on when but again no VCR so you had to watch it you had to watch it live and you had to make sure you didn't miss it. But the movie that just like totally knocked my socks off and said I want to do this that was Star Wars.
1977, it live, live, seeing it when it came out with the rest of the people, with the crowd. The buzz was already big. And it's so funny because I don't remember how buzz happened before the internet. But the buzz was huge. Mostly that came through the news. The news reporters would talk about these lines were forming and people were talking.
And so the buzz was huge. by, you know, and I went in the first couple of days and it was lines around the block kind of thing. And you go and see this movie and there had been good science fiction films before that. And that looks good. But this was just a marrying of a really great adventure and a really good look. And I was like, man, I want to do that. I want to do that so badly. So it really was Star Wars. Not that I didn't love movies going into it, but Star Wars is what told me I want to do this specifically.
Heather (05:52)
That's so cool.
Jess (05:52)
That's really cool.
I think Star Wars probably inspired a whole generation of filmmakers.
Ron Mita (05:57)
It really
did. what that turned me on to, and that was in 77, was realizing that there were all these young filmmakers out there who were churning out incredible things. And you had Spielberg and Lucas and Coppola and such. So, you know, there was all these great guys making these incredible films. And I just couldn't get enough of it. And honestly, 77 was like the beginning of just a
really great run of maybe 10 or 15 years of incredible movies. The early 80s, just continued. had you had ET, Indiana Jones, Blade Runner. All these movies were like massive impact. Man, you could see where my taste is. It was in commercial fun adventures, you know, and and so they were turning them on. I was eating them up and I said, I just want to do this. This is so fun.
Jess (06:48)
Yeah, so then that led you to, did you do any filmmaking as a,
Heather (06:48)
That's so cool.
Ron Mita (06:54)
So, you know,
in high school I was involved in the theater program and I said, okay, maybe I wanna be an actor. Maybe I wanna go to theater school. And then I thought, maybe I don't. And then I said, I really wanna go to school to make films, to do television and film. And I'm from Syracuse, New York and we have one of the best communication schools in the world right there in Syracuse, Syracuse University. But at the last minute I decided I...
don't want to do that. And I went and ultimately studied to become a graphic artist. And I graduated with a degree in graphic arts and started working as a graphic artist right after college and got fired because I wasn't a very good graphic artist. And I said, you know, screw it. I am going to change plans. I'm going to go to film school. so what I did is actually went to Boston. I had friends living there and I got a job at Boston University and then I got to enroll in Boston University.
So if you work at the university, you get to go to school for free. And I had this whole master plan and it was working out perfectly. I went to Boston University, took film classes, really enjoyed it. They liked me. I then enrolled as a graduate student. And then ⁓ after about a year there, one of my professors said, hey, I'm going to California to teach at Loyola Marymount. should go there. And I'm like, yeah, I should go to Hollywood. So ultimately I got married and we moved to California. And I started going to school at Loyola Marymount where I
got my graduate degree in screenwriting. So my path to Hollywood took me to Boston, it took me to graphic art school first, then Boston, and then the California.
Jess (08:20)
want to know how you went from graphic design to screenwriting, because I feel like that's such a different set of tools.
Ron Mita (08:28)
Well, the real answer to that is I should never have gone to graphic design in the first place. I should have just gone right to screenwriting or filmmaking, which was what my passion was. And I always tell my students, follow your passion, do what you want to do. And I don't know why I didn't do that at the time. And maybe I just felt like, well, being a graphic artist, I was a decent artist. You can do the artwork, you can make a living, and it's maybe a little bit less risky. ⁓
I did get a job right away, but I was working in a company. We designed paychecks for corporations, which are not very exciting. I mean, literally my job was to make the straight lines for paychecks. And we didn't have Mac computers. We were doing this by hand and it was tedious beyond all belief. I'm like, what did I do to myself? And that's when I, I, luckily I got fired. I, I, I didn't quit. got fired. should have quit. And that's when I said time to correct the ship.
and head to film school and get the stuff out. Do what I should have done. So I didn't miss too many years in that I graduated college, worked for six months as a graphic artist, got fired, got back on film track, you know, and moved forward. But it's funny, I actually was a filmmaker. When I was at Boston University, I was studying filmmaking. And then when I came to Loyola, I was studying filmmaking. But filmmaking at the time, you have to remember, we were using film cameras. So we were
spending a lot of money, you know, as poor students that we did not necessarily have. And you're talking about getting negatives printed and positives printed, and then we're cutting in these editing bays in the basement of the college. And it was not easy and not fun and a lot slower and duller than I don't want it to be. And I thought, I can write as good as I can make films. Why not try just my hand at writing? So I changed to screenwriting and that worked great because I could write a screenplay
look at it and it was done or done-ish and move on to the next thing. You never as a student finished a student film because we only cut the positive film if I can explain. And so unless you had money and resources, you were never going to get the actual print turned into a real film. Only a few students ever did that and it wasn't worth the money. So writing a script was great because I had a finished product in my hand and ultimately that got me to where I wanted to be.
Heather (10:41)
Do you feel like it caused you though to, because now, know, there's no consequence, which is good and bad, right? Like you can try so many things because everything's digital. So you can just keep filming. mean, data is whole other thing, but you know, do you feel like that forced you guys to just be more methodical about like what you were actually, or do you feel like it took away the element of what your students can do now, which is, and what we can all do now, which is just kind of like trial and error and going through it.
Ron Mita (11:11)
Well, I tell my students now, I say, you you have no idea what you have in your hands, in your back pocket. That cell phone of yours is a hundred times better than any camera I had, any computer I had. And you could do it all from your phone. So it's a totally different world. Maybe today I would have stayed in filmmaking only because it would have been a lot cheaper and more accessible to do, but.
⁓ I'm glad I changed to screenwriting nonetheless because all my friends who made those expensive films who went all the way and made these $50,000 student films, they got some meetings. Some of them made some terrific films and they got meetings. And when they got to the meeting, the first question that was asked to them is, what have you written? And they're like, well, I didn't write anything. I made that really cool student film and it was really cool. And they're like, yeah, it was a good film. It got you in the room. What have you written? And every one of them got hit with the same question and none of them had written anything, nothing more than a.
a short student film. They didn't have a feature film. They didn't have a TV show idea. And so that expensive film got them the meeting, but they didn't have any product. Meanwhile, as a writer, when I started writing and I started getting meetings, had, you what did I written? Well, that's what got me into the room in the first place, what I wrote. And then the key was I was in there with other stuff that I was ready to go with. So I'm glad I made that switch over only because I would have learned that lesson, you know, $100,000 later of student films.
only to find out that I needed to write a screenplay in the first place.
Heather (12:33)
I mean, yeah, you have to have the inventory to back it up. think so many people, just, I mean, they want the meeting, they want the opportunity, they want the chance, and it's like, okay, but what do you have? What are your, like...
Ron Mita (12:36)
Mm-hmm.
Well,
and the real key is nobody was looking to hire a film student to make a feature film. I mean, a couple, you know, in the world, yes, a couple have gotten that opportunity. But generally speaking, they weren't looking to pluck Spielberg out. They were looking to pluck the next good storyteller out. And they said, you did a good job with this movie. What story can you tell? And so, yeah, ultimately, even today, I tell my students, the odds of you being selected as a director right away, now you're going to earn your way to that position.
So again, make a great film, show them you've got the chops, but have a great screenplay or at least a great idea ready to go along with that.
Heather (13:22)
Yeah, I think that goes back to its story, story, story. Like it all goes down. I mean, you can have no budget and you can have this incredible story and you're set. But I think so many people, especially now with technology, a lot of filmmakers or up and coming filmmakers, they really focus on all the visuals, which is great and important, but there's like no narrative structure. There's no story to it. And that's what we all want and crave.
Ron Mita (13:25)
So we start.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
It is all about the story. So when I teach filmmaking, I'm not super technical. I mean, I know cameras enough, but I would not call myself a cinematography instructor. And I even say when we get in the class, you know, we got really great equipment. There are other people here, including most of my students who know more about it than me. I'm here to tell you how to make a story, how to make a film, how to make a short film that's compelling. And honestly, at the end of the day, I hope it looks good. It needs to have good sound.
It needs to be visually somewhat pleasing. It needs to be somewhat edited, but it has to have a good story. so someone's show does something slick and fancy, great. But if your story sucks, it's going nowhere. So I always teach filmmaking from the storytelling point of view. And it's actually great nowadays because my kids do come in very technically adept. I mean, they've grown up in the high schools and the junior highs making films. They've had fancy cameras for years. They know the tech.
which is a lot better than when I came up as a film student. The teachers did have to teach us how to use the cameras and what a lens did and all that kind of stuff.
These kids come prepared.
Heather (14:48)
Do you feel what audiences want today as a story? How has it changed? Do you feel like it's changed at all?
Ron Mita (14:54)
Well, it's interesting. Stories haven't changed. And that's the funny part about storytelling. Storytelling goes back, you know, before recorded history. And it's funny that I love teaching the history of storytelling in my classes because I talk about how stories evolved all over the world, myths that we all know. And no matter where you come from, if you're Nordic, you have Norse mythology, if you're Persian, Persian mythology, there's, you know, all over the globe, all these myths developed at the same time or at same time in separate places.
without any influence from each other, but they were so similar in storytelling. And that's what I teach when I talk about storytelling. teach about the similarities in the story beats. And actually everything's been done. How can you do it a little bit different and make it more compelling? What Hollywood is looking for always changes. And so they still want the same good stories. But what they want nowadays is stuff that's easier to produce, more contained.
Heather (15:24)
that were similar.
Ron Mita (15:46)
Okay, you know, it's funny, they're looking for films in the $40 million range and that could be anything. It could still be a big budget action film and it could also be a low budget film. They're looking for things they aren't looking for what I got to experience in the 90s, which was we want big action films. We don't care what they cost $100 million to make, which at that time was very expensive. And nowadays they definitely want more contained. If you notice when you watch movies today,
They don't like to use a lot of different locations. mean, yeah, it's one thing if you do a mission impossible and you've got a massive budget, but most movies take place in a very contained space. They're trying to trim the budget in various ways and make the film still appear large. They're looking for films that can be globally appealing. That wasn't the situation when I was making films, or when I was writing my first spec scripts.
So globalization of films,
has certainly affected the stories that we can tell. There's that. I find that the stories today, I'm not as excited about the movies I see coming out these days. There's very few that I think, wow, that's just something I wanna stand in line for. Very, very few.
Heather (16:49)
Yeah, I think that globalization of the film market and them wanting to, because global box office, looking at the numbers, mean, it's really very crucial to a film's success and to make back their budget. they want action. They want things that feel big and visual because that's what's going to translate best to an international market, right?
Ron Mita (17:12)
Well, that and
also a lot of the money is coming from those Asian nations. So for instance, my last film was called 24 Hours to Live. That was the first film I made that wasn't a studio movie. And actually it was a great lesson to me because it's the new way of making movies. That film premiered on Netflix. It's Ethan Hawke stars. ⁓ It's good story. It's a good action thriller, very contained. It was ⁓ written to take place in Washington, D.C. It was rewritten to take place in South Africa because that's where they could film it and get all sorts of ⁓
know, perks to film the movie. So they make it in South Africa. It's a big change, but okay, we do it. It was written to have a female American, I'll call her, not a sidekick, but a foil character. They changed that to an Asian, I believe she was Chinese actress who was well known in China. I don't know who she was. And she was placed in there. And the story then had to be written as to why this Chinese cop was in the story.
So in the movies we say she works for Interpol. I don't even know if Interpol is a real thing. It certainly isn't in the movies. So you could feel the globalization in the film and that really bothered me when I saw the films. Like this film feels like it wasn't written to be produced in the nation it was produced in with the characters and the people that were in it. It feels like they just looked for a product, and unfortunately it was my product, that they could retail her to work with and make work within their constraints. And I'm seeing that in a lot of movies taking place
in sometimes in foreign nations when you're like does this really need to take place in Prague? I mean don't get me wrong I love movies that go to international settings but that's usually when they have to do with international intrigue and mystique but we're seeing movies filmed all over the globe that feel like they should be filmed here story-wise.
Jess (18:51)
How do
you navigate that if you have a vision for something you've written and then you're working with the other teams, the other departments, and they're like, okay, it's gonna be in this other country and we're gonna pull in this other character. How do you navigate that? What are some tools that you use?
Ron Mita (19:10)
I think it's just basically you just swallow it because here's the deal. When you write a screenplay and you sell it. Now, if I wrote a spec script, which means it's a script I wrote on my own time, it's my own story, nobody owns it, but I sell it to Warner Brothers or I sell it to Universal. The moment I sell it to them, I sign a contract and the contract literally says Warner Brothers is the author of this screenplay. And that means Warner Brothers can do anything they want to the screenplay. I've been paid, I will continue to be paid and so on. But ultimately,
the ownership and the story is theirs and they can do what they want. So I can complain all I want. And maybe I will, maybe I have, but it doesn't matter because their decision is all that matters. And I learned a long time ago, complaining did not benefit me. On the movie SWAT, we had a green light years before the movie was made and we had offices, we were go, go, go. We had this crazy director. I didn't like him. Nobody liked him. The studio didn't like him. And so the studio said to us, know,
we're gonna get rid of him. And I'm like, yeah, get rid of him. And then I realized later they got rid of him and then that killed the project for three years. So I'm not a big fan of change because change never does anyone any good. And I'm also not a big fan of rooting against my project in any way or form. So no, I should not have insisted that the director be fired, not that I had much to do with it. And no, I will not go to a studio and say, I don't like the changes you made to my screenplay. My goal is for the screenplay to be made. Now I will try to
massage in like, that could be better. But at the end of the day, all the movies I've written that have gotten made, none of them turned out the way I wanted them. Now, it doesn't mean I don't like them, I do, but I know how much better they all could have been with the way they were originally written. That includes Robots and Swat, they were all written to another level that the movie didn't ultimately have. And I think everybody you talk to is gonna come back and say, this could have been so much better on their film.
Heather (21:02)
That's so interesting. I definitely have heard that before from other creatives. I think Mark Platt said that about Wicked. And they asked him like on another podcast, they said, well, did you make the movie you wanted to make? You've been trying to make this movie for 20 years. And he said, we made the movie. We made the film. We made the film that we needed to make. those are like trying to figure out what do you give up in order to let the project go to the finish line.
Ron Mita (21:08)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Well, there's a reason why nobody wants the writers on the set of a movie. Now, in our contract, we are allowed to come to the set of our movie, you know, provided it's in town. I they're not going to pay me to fly me to Prague, but they are. So, but they like us to call ahead. Hey, I'm coming to the set today and check in. writers, they don't like writers there because writers get really angry.
hey, I didn't write that. Hey, he's not supposed to be doing that. got to check your ego at the door, I tell my students, and you've to go in there. You got to be excited they made your movie. I mean, you know, and that is a neat thing at the end of the day to see your movie on the screen, to see your name up there. And you have to accept that you are part of this collaboration and other people are involved and they are going to make decisions. Now, if I really wanted to have more control, I could
should probably make an independent film. I should probably try to get financing and direct it and do it all myself. I don't want to do that. I like doing what I'm doing. I'm willing to work with producers to make the film that I want, but that they want to make. But I do have to surrender a little bit. And if you have a strong ego and can't deal with that, then screenwriting isn't for you. You've got to be able to go with the flow. It's a lot like actors and actresses. They're being told what to do.
And there are actors who become difficult because they don't like taking direction, but a director is there to direct his vision or the studio's vision. And you've got to take direction. And the same thing as a writer, we take direction.
Heather (22:45)
Yeah, you have to be able to be in a place where you can kind of be molded and shaped.
Ron Mita (22:49)
it's funny. always say it's when you show up as a writer on the set of a movie, they look at you like, he's here. And they basically look at you and I always get I always say they look at you with the idea like they're they're not saying it, but I know they're thinking it would be so nice if you weren't here right now. And that's that's that's what they're thinking. not saying it, but that's what they're thinking.
Heather (23:13)
I feel like it's probably the same energy when you're on a commercial set and the client shows up. It's kind of, it's kind of, everyone's like, ⁓ okay, now we have to be this certain way kind of thing, you know?
Ron Mita (23:18)
Sure.
behaving nicely for me because I'm not paying them. They're just worried that I'm going to have a hissy fit over the way the actor is delivering the line, which I'm not, but plenty of writers are. I have friends who are writers who are difficult. And that's hurt them in a long way.
Heather (23:26)
That's true.
Hmm. Yeah, not being like a collaborator, especially.
Jess (23:41)
Mm-hmm.
Ron Mita (23:41)
No, no, they're
like, you know, they get angry, they write hot letters, they send off emails, and nobody wants to deal with that. And you're not gonna change anything. Unless you are very high up, you are not gonna have control. And even the highest paid writers in Hollywood don't have the control you think they have.
Heather (23:56)
There are so many variables, I think, I mean, ultimately, it's a business, and it comes down to business decisions. And I think those will triumph over anything creative, unfortunately. I think more and more, it seems as if what we have seen in this trend of a lot of the executives at the studio level are more business minded than they are creative minded. And so they lean that way, and decisions are made based on those parameters.
Ron Mita (24:21)
Well, it is a business. And again, that's the way I teach my classes. I teach my class from the commercial point of view. say, look, we are writing a spec script with the idea of selling it to a studio who's going to turn it into a multi-billion dollar franchise. And that's going to pay you, and it's going to pay them, and it's going to pay actors. It's going to pay thousands of people. Everyone's going to make money on this if you do good work. And I said, but you are going to have to make concessions in your story to get it sold and down the line.
But it's a business and they have the money and they have the say so. mean, you are, you're making a product to someone who is going to sell your product. So you do have to work with them until you finance your own film. have to work with them.
Heather (25:01)
Yeah, for sure. I want to go back really quick. so you graduate from film school here in Los Angeles. You went to Loyola. You got a graduate degree in screenwriting. And then what? What was the process of getting your foot in the door?
Ron Mita (25:09)
I went to Loyola Marymount here in Los Angeles.
Well,
actually, I got the degree in screenwriting about six months after I sold my first screenplay. So I was already a professional writer, which was kind of cool. My graduate degree, by the way, my degree in screenwriting did not get me sold as a screenwriter. It was a very nice degree. I love college. I love going to school. I love my students going to school because it's where you can do really bad work. I tell my students, come in my class and
This is where you can fail. You're allowed to fail in peace here. And I don't mean fail by not attending. I mean fail by not doing good work or making a bad film or writing a bad screenplay. Get it out of your system. You're allowed to write crappy work in my class. You're allowed to make a bad film in my class, but you can't do that in the real world. So I was a grad student at Loyola, but I started working in the industry. got an internship. Actually, I started as a tour guide at Universal Studios. And it actually all probably starts right there.
I was a tour guide at Universal Studios. I was a grad student at the same time. And the tour used to have these producers who would come in and they'd speak to us, the tour guides. It was kind of a fun perk. We'd get to watch a movie and then the producers would talk to us. We had big Hollywood producers come in. The guy that came in one week, he was actually a TV movie producer, made a lot of TV movies. And after the lecture, I went up to him and said, hey, I'm a film student and I would love to get an internship with you. And back then that was that simple.
Yeah, because he knew that meant free work and I knew that meant free work, but I just knew that I wanted to work for a producer. So I started working for him a couple of days a week. We were making a TV movie for this company, it was for CBS. was actually Josh Brolin was in this TV movie and it about a teenager track athlete who was taking steroids, you because these were all disease of the week kind of movies.
And I don't even remember what the movie is about. through that, got another job at the company that was financing the film. And then I became an assistant for a TV executive, still going to school. And then I said, hey, I want to work on the studio side. And a friend of mine, she said, well, there's a woman who's just got a job as an executive at Universal. That was Nina Jacobson, who's gone on to do a lot of big stuff. So I interviewed with Nina. I became her assistant. And then about a year and a half later, maybe two years later,
Through the people I had met, including Nina and other people, I was able to get my script to some agents. And then the agents read the script I wrote called Track Down. It was about terrorists taking over the English Channel tunnel. And they sold it. It was funny, I got a phone call from the agent. My script had been moving around town and some producers I had met who were being really helpful to me, getting it out to some agents. And this big agent named Gavin Pallone, was the biggest in town at the time.
He called, but he always called my boss, you know, and so he calls and I'm like, oh, Nina's busy, but I'll grab her. goes, no, no, I'm calling to talk to you. I'm like, oh God, what'd do? He was kind of a mean dude. And he said, I read your script and I think we could sell it. And I'm like, oh my God. that was a Monday. I told Nina I gotta go somewhere. I ran down to United Talent Agency, UTA, took a meeting with a couple of agents. They told me they'd never sold a script for less than six figures. That was Monday.
And by Thursday, they had sold it for about a half a million dollars against a million, basically a spec. So I had a spec sale. I met the guy on Monday and on Thursday, I was no longer an assistant. Actually, I stayed on two more weeks as an assistant, but I was, you know, I was a professional screenwriter now. So it was kind of cool. So it happened overnight, but it didn't happen overnight at all. Yeah.
Heather (28:42)
That's nice of you.
Jess (28:46)
What do you think some
of the pieces of that that you would tell your students now? To me, it seems like networking was a very important piece of this.
Ron Mita (28:55)
100%.
What I tell my students, it was all about my internships. Nobody's ever asked to see my degree in filmmaking. Even working at the studio, it was great. I met a lot of people, but that all started my internship. So I started with the job. The guide is not really the Hollywood inroad, but there was a lot of actors, moving that way, a couple of filmmakers and students. But the internship that I got from that was the first one. then
It turned into a low paying job, which turned into another low paying job. And I just kept jumping. I was like, you know, I just kept jumping from job to job to job, working my way to a movie studio where I wanted to be. And at that point, when I was working at the movie studio for Nina, there was part of me saying, well, if I never sell a screenplay, I wouldn't mind being a studio executive. wouldn't mind working for this, continue to work for a studio, not being an assistant, obviously, but you know, because I've got a good story sense. Maybe I could be a buyer.
And maybe I never saw on the screenplay, that's where I'd be. But again, yeah, the network that I created by getting the internship and the people I surrounded myself with, the friends, the other assistants, they were key. So I do tell my students, if you can get an assistant job, working for a studio, working for an agency is even better, working for a producer, anything like that, it's an amazing inroad. Ground floor, everyone knows the assistants in Hollywood are not there to get caught.
They are there because like everyone else, they are there to start climbing the ladder. And so they're treated with a level of respect. There's some disrespect, but generally they're treated with respect. so I got that internship probably came in 1989. so by 93, I had sold the script. So it still took four years. Three or four years.
Jess (30:36)
Wow. But still, that's a great opportunity for you jumped out of college and you started learning the business and understanding it so that when the opportunity presented itself, you were ready to take it.
Ron Mita (30:49)
Mm hmm.
Well, it also took swallowing a little bit of pride because here I was a graduate student. I'm getting a master's degree, right? Loyola is considered one of the top five or six film schools in the country. It's an outstanding film school. And but as an assistant working for a studio, I'm still getting people coffee. You know, it's like there's a meeting and it's like, you like coffee? Can I get you anything else? And like, you know, I'm like, some of these people are really rude, like, yes, coffee and no, you know, and I'm like, I'm not a
waitress at Starbucks here, you know, I'm an assistant, So at times it'd be frustrating because you're like, I should be in that room not bringing coffee to that room. But you also knew you were doing your time. I had friends who worked there as assistants who had graduated law school. I had a friend who graduated Duke Law School, but he's gone on to become a very well-known producer. yeah, you know, he was taking his lumps just like me. We were, here we were pretty educated.
and getting people coffee, but also knowing these were the steps we had to do. So you've got to swallow your ego, you've to swallow your pride a little bit. If you're willing to do that and put in a couple of years of that grunt work, the network builds and the opportunities come avail themselves.
Heather (31:56)
you kind of rise together. Like there's so many people that you started with and now you look to your right and left and then like, this person I know But you don't realize it because you all kind of rise together and you look around and realize, I do have this network, you know?
Ron Mita (31:59)
Yes.
You
do rise together and I always tell my students keep in touch with each other, create your network and don't break your network because when that person gets a job and they're looking for another person, they're going to call you, I have a friend, I went to school with this person. That call is going to come. So many of my opportunities as a screenwriter, once I was represented and out there, didn't come through my agent, they came through networks, people I knew that said, hey, Ron's available. So yeah, the network never ends. It really never ends.
But you gotta nurture it. You can't just ignore it. can't say, I'm not gonna, you know, can't ghost your friends for a couple of years and then say, hey, you got anything for me? You know, you gotta kind of keep it going.
Heather (32:47)
Well, mean, Jess and I have known each other for a very long time. And we talk about how we just recently kind of started working together in the last couple of years. And there's other people. mean, there's someone I've known for 10 years. And only in the last few years did I hire them on a project. And it's just building genuine. think people, a lot of early career individuals think that networking is
Ron Mita (33:04)
Mm-hmm.
Heather (33:13)
Can I take you to coffee and can I do this? it's like, no, it has to be genuine building of relationships and all that stuff because there has to be a level of trust. If you're on the hiring end, you want to have that built-in trust because ultimately, you're on the line for whoever you bring in, in a sense. having that built in.
Ron Mita (33:15)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
And when you partner with somebody, you do want to be very careful that you have the similar sensibilities and the similar qualities. And you also that you bring maybe two different skills to the table, you know,
Heather (33:43)
I think that goes off of like no one makes a film alone. And so it's just learning how to work with other people. Because I know there were people that come to my mind that shall not be named in school, probably myself too, that were like very specific about, OK, but I have this vision and this is how, you know, they were not flexible. And you have to learn how to work with other people if you want to, I think, be successful in this business. But you also, you have a writing partner, right Ron? Can you talk about that?
Ron Mita (33:49)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, not on everything, but
yes. And I've worked with a writing partner for years it's good and bad at times. It's generally good because we bring different sensibilities to the table, but you also have to split every paycheck. So when you get paid a lot of money for a screenplay, you're like, half of it's going to somebody else. And then also you get,
grouped together, which isn't so bad, but it is if you're the story guy, you don't necessarily want to be grouped together with the technical guy because, you know, you don't want people getting, you know, people assuming that maybe the story comes from the other people. So I am the story guy.
Heather (34:42)
That's very cool because I think it's so important for us as individual creatives to have our brand. know, like we go, well, but you as the individual, you have a personal brand and it's what people know you for. And so that has to be sort of meticulously crafted, whether or not it's very forward facing or seems supernatural and just, you know, very organic. You still have to craft the narrative of yourself.
Ron Mita (34:56)
Mm-hmm.
I always tell my students when we talk to like about branding themselves about it and it basically is what do people say about you when you're not in the room? And if you can control what they say about you when you're not in the room, he's a very dynamic guy, writes really good action movies, then that's good. Because if you don't control what they say about you when you're not in the room, then they're going to say something about you're not the same evil or bad or mean.
but they're not gonna necessarily say what you want them to think or say. all I'm saying is be known for what it is you do. In Hollywood, I'm known for writing action films. I'm known for writing animated films. That happened quite by chance. It's a funny story as to how I up writing robots. I will tell it real quick. But my point is you get known, you get branded. And I was happy being branded as the action guy, especially in the late 90s and the 2000s,
Heather (35:54)
Do you want to tell it?
Jess (35:55)
Yeah.
Ron Mita (36:05)
Die Hard was the influence on everything. And if you could churn out a Die Hard, you were in good shape. But it was funny with robots, again, not an animated writer. We were actually pitching a movie at 20th Century Fox about giant bugs that took over town, not an animated movie. It was about a town that was being attacked by these giant bugs. We were working with a CGI company at the time, and CGI was just kind of breaking. And they were like, we can animate bugs to look real.
because they have hard shells, because the technology wasn't, I'm like, okay, so let's go pitch this story about bugs. It was kind of like a monster movie. We pitched it to 27th Street Fox and they didn't like it enough to want to buy it. But there are people from there, because we were using elements of CGI, there are people from their animation division were there. And they talked to me, they said, you know, I love the sensibility.
I got this screenplay we're working on. We just don't think we like it. Can you take a look at it? Maybe change it to something else. So they gave us a screenplay. We looked at it and it was about a mastodon, a saber tooth tiger, I'm sorry, a woolly mammoth, a saber tooth tiger and a squirrel. And it was Ice Age, but they hadn't made Ice Age yet. And they're like, we just don't know if we like this. And we came back and we said, okay, well, what if we took the story and we got rid of the prehistoric
creatures and we made it a planet full of robots. And there's no human beings in this planet, but humans crash land on the other side of the planet and there's a small encampment of humans there. But somehow a baby ends up on the robot side of the planet and the robots find this baby and they have to bring it back and these three robots have to bring it back to the humans. So we pitched that take on what you now know to be Ice Age.
But it was only two weeks that we were gone. Like we went away, came up with the story, came back two, well by time we came back, they go, you know what, we're gonna make Ice Age the way it is. We're like, okay. They go, but we really like this robot thing. So keep going with that. So they brought us back and ultimately we developed robots. They had a ⁓ children's author named William Joyce who wrote, he made the TV series Roly Poly Oly, which I don't know if you, amongst other things and a beautiful animator, artist I should say.
So they were working with him on something and we came in with our robot story. And ultimately our robot story was The Three Musketeers of Robots. And if you watch the movie today, that is what it is. If you remember The Three Musketeers, it's about D'Artagnan who comes to the big city to become a musketeer and finds out that everything's corrupt and everyone's bad and he's an outcast. And that's what Robots became. So that's how we ended up writing Robots. We came in to tell them about big bugs. And when they said, can you write an animated movie? I'm like, you.
damn right we can because you never say no. I don't care if they if it's asking you about something you have no idea what it is I can figure it out in a week. And so we came back with an animated film and that worked out so.
Jess (38:55)
That's incredible.
Ron Mita (38:56)
Yeah, was, is almost every story I've ever sold. Everything that's ever happened is incredible in that it just didn't happen easy and in one straight direction. Like, Hey, I went in, they said yes. And, and off we go. Actually that did happen once. I pitched a, I got to pitch a movie to Steven Spielberg and, I, pitch this, we were pitching this really cool ⁓ feature film about, people finding Atlantis. He was really.
into Atlantis for a while there. And so was kind of an Indiana Jones adventure kind of thing about these young people who find Atlantis and got to go in, got to meet Spielberg. That was really weird walking into a room and there's Spielberg and you're like, holy cow. You know, I'm kind of freaking out now and ⁓ sat down and ⁓ pitched him the story. And I pitched to tons of people in Hollywood, all different levels.
By far, he was the best, not because the story ends with him buying the script, which he did. It really has to do with him listening to the pitch, understanding everything that we were saying, and even adding in a thought or two as we went along, which is kind of cool, like Spielberg's helping me out in the story here. At the end of the pitch, he goes, I like this, I think we'll do it. And part of me is like, well, don't you have to ask anyone? Then I'm thinking, who the hell does Spielberg have to ask, right? There's nobody he loves, God, I guess, right? So he, I get a phone call at lunch, yeah.
Spielberg just bought your idea. It was just a pitch. It wasn't even a script. then we wrote it. It never came to be. We wrote it. It's sitting on a shelf somewhere, as is a lot of the stuff I've worked on in Hollywood. But as far as like, wow, that was simple. That was the only time it was ever simple. We just walked in the room, told the guy's story, and he said, yeah, I'll buy it. Because it was the only person I've ever spoken to that probably has that power. It was probably the only person in Hollywood that has the power to just buy in the room.
Because I've had yeses in the room that turned into nos the next day because their boss wasn't on board. But that was Spielberg.
Jess (40:50)
I of want to change, you know, still talking about the industry, but I want to talk a little bit about the state of the industry, how it is today. you know, we want to give our listeners hope. So, you know, I know you experienced the 08 writer's strike. So, you know, can you tell us what that looked like and how it compares today?
Ron Mita (41:01)
Yeah.
Yeah.
So over my lifetime as a professional writer, being a member of the Writers Guild, we've had several, we had two strikes, I think, and several attempted strikes. I'm very anti-strike. I'm very pro-union. I'm very pro-union and I believe in what unions do, but my union's a weird union. You know, we're not, we're not making car parts. We're not working on an assembly line.
And so, and I understand what our gripes are. We want to make sure we're getting PC action. There's billions of dollars being made. Why shouldn't I have a PC action? I totally am on board with that. But we're also gig workers, you know, and so you're in a union as a gig worker. There aren't many gig worker unions in the world. Do you think about everyone in Hollywood is in a gig worker union. Actors are gig workers and everyone, you know, after all that, Ayasi. But the rest of the world, if you're in a union, you're not, you're not in a gig. You're probably not a gig worker.
So what a gig worker means though is like, got a job, thank God, I got a job. I'm working for this month or this year, but when it's done, I got to find another job and that sucks. So when the strikes come along, I'm always like, no, not good, not good because this is going to kill my job that I worked really hard to get this screenplay. And a lot of times studios will just kill every project, wipe it out and just redraw the board, use it as an opportunity to dump their backlogs. Studios like Universal has 300 scripts in development.
Do you think they're going to keep monitoring it? No, they're going to get rid of 200, 150 of them. And those writers all gone. might get, I might get in a feature film. I can't not get paid, but the project itself won't go forward. Or if I'm in the process of negotiation, that negotiation is going to stop. So when the, when this where do you want to strike? I want to tell them, Hey, if you're working, this is not good. And if you're not working, you're going to screw the guy who's working.
Heather (42:37)
and write off losses.
Ron Mita (42:58)
And unfortunately, 95 % of most of the gig unions are not working, actors, the writers. And so 95 % of the union votes for the strike because, if I'm not working, why should you be working? And so we get this strike. And the things we fought for in the strike, I get it. One of the concerns is about AI. And it's a legitimate concern, but I don't know that we need to go on strike about it. The AI concern was we don't want studios writing a script with AI.
And then coming to me as a writer and say, I need you to rewrite this. You see, get, if you hire me to write a screenplay, I get paid X, but if I do a rewrite, get paid half of X. And so obviously hiring me to rewrite your AI generated screenplay is cheaper for you studio. And for me, I'm rewriting a mediocre script. So, so that's one of the fears we have about AI, but I'm not. So going along with the strikes, I, I've never been a fan. The reason I got into teaching.
was because of a strike. In 2002, we were threatening strike. And I thought, I don't have a plan B. I don't know what the, I ain't gonna be a graphic artist again. That ship has sailed and I don't wanna go there. And I live right near COC. So said, well, I'll see if they needed a teacher to teach screenwriting. Perfect. Taught a class. There was a summer class with like five people in the class. And realized that was 2003. Those people were like what? 45, six years old now. And...
But I really enjoyed it. I had a lot of fun and I came back the next semester and then I started to really enjoy coming back, taking on more classes. the writer's strike actually got me to teaching, which is the best thing that's ever come to me from a strike, because I don't know that I've ever made that much of a financial benefit from anything we ever struck about. I kind of took the long way around. Not a fan of the strikes because gig workers and strikes, just doesn't work. It doesn't work to everyone's benefit. A few people will benefit in the last strike, the richest writers.
will benefit. The unemployed writers will still be employed and the people who just kind of working day to day, if they lost a job in that window of time, that could be anywhere from $100,000 to $200,000. Are they going to get that money back? I don't think so.
Heather (45:04)
What do you think about, you know, as far as having been through probably some different eras of this industry and seeing, okay, you know, how the landscape looked post that writer's strike, you know, and just like the different trends or things that have transpired, even kind of the shift more towards television where, you know, features where now television has really kind of taken another golden age, if you will.
⁓ Like, have you seen times in the industry when it's been this sort of energy, this sort of tone, you know, and how have you seen it change since then?
Ron Mita (45:43)
So it is interesting. It's fascinating for me to watch the different, you know, 10 year windows and you know, we're in the streaming media world right now. Like again, this last feature film of mine that was sold as a spec script, I thought, that's going to go to the theaters and it didn't. It went to Netflix, which was fine because it got a ton of views on Netflix. And I'm thinking, ⁓ I'm going to make it a ton of money on residuals in this script. And no, I did not because the new market, the new world we're in.
the writer's residuals are mystifying. Whereas the residuals I got from studio releases, SWAT and all those movies, very organized, very trackable, very lucrative. SWAT's 20 years old now, I'm still getting really good checks in the mail from that movie. 24 Hours to Live is only a few years old. I get like a weird random check and it's not for that much money. And I'm like, man, So how the world has changed.
Streaming media, means I think it's a little more difficult for the writers to get the money that they were getting before. Let me go back in time. In the 90s, the studios were all being purchased by corporations. Corporations that had no business running a movie studio were buying movie studios. And it's sexy. It's cool to own Universal. It's cool to own. While I was there, Universal was owned by Seagrams. They make liquor. And then it was owned by Machu Cida, which is a Japanese company that made... There I could see it. They made like a...
stereos and television sets. But all these companies, when they bought the studios, threw a lot of money at the studios. So in the 90s, when I was coming up, studios had a ton of money to waste or to burn or to go and pay a lot of it. So if you go back in time and study spec scripts in the 90s, if you even Google that question, you're going to see crazy sales for millions of dollars. I mean, they were just buying ideas left and right. And I was part of it. So I was super excited. I sold several spec scripts in the 90s and they were buying like crazy.
Those salad days are gone. They still do sell spec scripts in the studios, still buy them, but not like they did back then. On the flip side, nowadays film students, young writers, screenwriters, there's more product out there than there ever was before. There are more channels. You flip around and you go, I never even heard of this channel and they have movies of their own. So there are more opportunities. But with the globalization, a lot of those opportunities are also being taken, it's not just you competing with other people in Hollywood,
competing with a global market of writers and global market of everything. So there's more product out there, but I think it's still just, it's still really just difficult to get yourself into the position to sell it. It was a lot easier in the spec script days because you'd write a spec script, people would snap it up, an agent wanted to represent it, they'd get it out there. Even if it didn't sell, it got out there and was seen by all of Hollywood in one week. And that meant every studio saw you.
that in itself would generate meetings. Like, okay, we saw your script, we didn't buy it, but man, we love that idea. And then you got a whole slew of meetings and those meetings would turn into other work. Nowadays, the spec script market not being what it is, you're not gonna get those opportunities. it's a, I hate to tell my students it's a harder world, but it's kind of a harder world.
Jess (48:52)
It's just a different world, I think. It's just a different world.
Ron Mita (48:53)
Yeah, it's a giver of-
It is, but I will say this. It's not like it was an easy world when I did it. And I told you the path I did to get there. So you have to take that path as all my steps. Those four years of being an assistant and hustling. That holds true today. There's no easy way into Hollywood. And my students always go, well, what, how do I get it? I'm like, I don't know. You need to go suffer for four years like I did. And so part of it is you got to do the work. And that means you've got to be diligent. You can't just write the script. You got to write the script. Oh, but see,
I you gotta write the script and get out there, but you guys can do that today. I didn't have social media. I didn't have access to Instagram. I couldn't tell people what I was doing. I couldn't let people... I had gatekeepers I had to get past. You before I got an agent, I had to try to get past an assistant to get someone to return my call. Now, you know, there's gatekeepers. I can bypass gatekeepers by using social media. So...
The young filmmakers, young entertain writers and people today have a lot more tools at their disposal to get past the gatekeepers. And I didn't have that. while I feel like they were spending a lot of money back then, there were a lot of gatekeepers. Nowadays, there's ways around the gate. So use it. Use social media.
Jess (50:12)
Ron, if somebody's just starting out, what's one piece of advice you'd give them?
Ron Mita (50:17)
Well, okay. My piece of advice, mostly from the writer's perspective, even if you're not a writer, it's write something. Learn how to tell a story, learn how stories work, and it's really not that hard. A screenwriting class or two can do it. Understand story and then have a story. Now, write one or have something to pitch. Now, you can say, well, I'm a cinematographer or, you know, it doesn't matter.
have a story to tell. Because at the end of the day, if you get in the room with somebody who's, you know, everyone wants content and everyone wants product. If I'm a buyer, I want content. I mean, it's funny because I put up gates. I don't want you in my office. But if you get into my office, you better have something to offer me. And so I tell my students, have a story. I tell my students, do not take a meeting without a story. If, if for chance someone says, you know, my brother-in-law is an executive universal, say great.
I want to meet with him next year or six months from now, I'm working on a screenplay. You don't want to walk into that room and have nothing. You want to walk in that room and have something. And at the end of the day, that meeting will then be like, well, great, we didn't, we don't care much for the story you told us, but we like you. You're good in the room. So I would tell anyone starting out, you need to have a story. You should try to learn how to write a screenplay, but at the very least you should have a story in your back pocket that you can pitch or try to sell or get someone excited about.
Because again, a story is the kernel for what could become a billion-dollar franchise, a billion-dollar idea.
Heather (51:47)
I think that's such great advice. And that's also something that's very accessible. Like, you can just write your story. That's all you need.
Ron Mita (51:52)
Yes, super accessible.
You can learn how to write at home. At COC, we teach our classes online for that reason. We teach online and online live because we know that the people who want to learn how to screenwrite are probably working their ass off all day. And the last thing they do is come down to COC and take a class. So we said, let's make these things accessible to them. So A, find a class, and that's be COC, UCLA has great classes and all that, you know, that are available to the regular people, not you don't have to enrolled.
and learn the process, learn storytelling, come up with a story or two, or a TV series, but have something. A story is something that actually has value if you can get someone excited to buy it. And that's pretty amazing because it doesn't physically exist. It's just, it's out there in the ether, but it's yours.
Heather (52:40)
So cool, I love that. My last question for you ⁓ is, do you have an industry secret you wanna share? And by that, I mean like a hack or a tip or something. You kind of just gave us like the big idea one. ⁓
Ron Mita (52:41)
Yeah. Yeah.
Hmm.
Well,
you know, a hacker tip for all my students, I already kind of said it and that's the internship route. It really is. But so I've had students get internships and some of them got some really good internships, but you've got to make the most of it because while you're in that internship, you need to either get them excited about keeping you on full time or get them excited or help you.
find the next internship, which ultimately will lead to a paying job. But here, guess, would be my true hack. Always let people know what it is you want to do in Hollywood. I want to be a writer. I want to be a director. I know it's embarrassing to sit there and say, want to be a writer. You don't say it to everybody all the time. But make sure people understand that's what you want to do. Don't be a nuisance. a writer, I, OK, so I'm in film school. I'm working at a studio. I knew that I can't come in there and ingratiate myself by knocking on every executive's door.
Hey, I work down the hall, but you know, I really want to be a writer. I wasn't like, you know, never be that guy, but let people know. So my boss, she knew why I was there. She knew I wanted to be a writer or a filmmaker, a writer really. And other people as they got to know me knew that. Let people know what you want to do. No one is going to, you're never going to get there if you don't tell people what you want to do. And then there are people along the way who will say, well, I can help you with that. You know, if you're cool.
People will help you if you're not annoying. So let people know. The hack I would say is let people know what you want to do. Don't over ask. Don't ask favors. Ask favors at the appropriate time. Don't ask too many favors, I should say. But let people know what you want to do. Because I can't sit there and look at you and say, I think you'd be a screenwriter. You need to tell me you want to be a screenwriter. And we'll go from there.
Heather (54:46)
That's so cool. I love that. Yeah, because if you're like a great assistant and they just think you want to be an assistant forever, they'll just keep you in that role. So it's like, okay, communicating what it is you actually want to do, having the inventory to back it up. And I think you're kind of networking.
Ron Mita (54:51)
Yeah! Yeah.
Yeah. Yes. Well,
Jess (55:00)
Networking.
Ron Mita (55:02)
it's the network. It really is a network. And it's funny, when Nina Jacobson hired me at Universal, I told her I was a film student. I pretty much promised her I wasn't going to be that annoying kind of film student. And so she was excited to hire me because she knew I wasn't interested in being a secretary. I wasn't interested in being an assistant, that she could be a mentor to me in a sense. She liked hiring.
an educated person who was working towards that field. And so it worked to my benefit to tell her what it is I wanted to do. know, some people would say, I don't want to say anything because I don't want them to think I'm a nooch. No, no, let them know. Just don't be annoying.
Heather (55:40)
That's cool. I think you also told me one time, be a student as long as possible. Use your student card.
Ron Mita (55:46)
well,
yes, yes, yes, that is a good piece of advice, too. I always tell my students, to be always be a film student as long as you can because it gets you indoors. OK, Hollywood talk about gatekeepers. don't want anyone. Hollywood doesn't want anyone in there, but we'll open the gate for a couple of people every now and again. And one of the people we open the gates for our film students. Hey, I'm a film student at Loyola Miramont. Hey, I'm a film student at College of the Canyon. Somehow that makes it sound like you've been vetted by College of the Canyon and we're like, yeah, he's OK.
And I find that when you use that I'm a film student card, you can get meetings you couldn't normally get. You can get in the room and meet with people that you couldn't normally meet with. So, yes, I tell my students take one class and keep telling everyone you're a film student. So someday you could say, I'm a screenwriter. I've been paid to write a movie, you know. But I love that film student card. Works very good.
Heather (56:39)
Awesome. Well, I think that's an amazing ⁓ note to end on today. How can people find you? Are you on social media? How can people connect to you?
Ron Mita (56:49)
⁓ you know, it's
funny. I've I'm on social. Well, I'm on Facebook for my family and friends. I'm on Instagram, but I don't Instagram. if people need to get in touch with me, they can find me at College of the Canyons. You can just Google me and my contact information comes up. I probably should Instagram more, but I'm not trying to prove anything at this point in my life. Yeah. So,
Heather (57:04)
You don't need to. You don't need to. But people should
come take your class at COC.
Ron Mita (57:08)
Right,
yeah, if they want to take my class, can find me at COC. I'm the only professional screenwriter that teaches at COC. There are other people teaching writing classes, but reach out to me if you want to take my class. It's a lot of fun. think, Heather, you've taken my class in the past and I try to make it super enjoyable and fun because I don't want to scare people away. Hollywood is for everybody. If you got a dream, you got a story, come on, we can do this together.
Jess (57:09)
Absolutely.
Heather (57:32)
That's amazing. I love that.
Jess (57:32)
Thank you so much, Ron.
We're so happy to have you on the podcast day. We appreciate it. Thank you.
Ron Mita (57:34)
Alright guys, it was great, terrific, thanks for having me.
Heather (57:40)
All right, well, that's the show for today. But before we switch back, we want to remind you.
Jess (57:45)
subscribe to the pod. helps us out. It helps you stay connected and in the know with new episodes. Also follow us on socials at switching to pod. Get on our mailing list. We're going to be sending out some resources, tools, tips, information along with our episodes. Thanks for listening.
Heather (58:05)
Thanks for listening to Switching To.
Jess (58:06)
Hosted and edited by Heather Kate Duncan and Jess Boyer. Original music by Top Flow courtesy of the Pixabay Royalty Free Music Library. Recorded on location in Los Angeles, California. Follow us on social at SwitchingTwoPod. Show notes and transcripts can be found at SwitchingTwoPod.com.
